SEO services for Charleston businesses that sell to visitors, neighbors and other companies

SEO services built around Charleston's three kinds of customer

Charleston sells to visitors, to residents and to other companies, sometimes all three on the same block. The plans are the same across the state. Here the effort goes to the places where each of those groups looks:

• Business Profile work for visitor trades. Restaurants, inns, tour operators and shops on the peninsula get picked from a phone, often days before the trip. We set the categories, hours, menu or booking links and fresh photos so the profile does the selling.
• Service areas named the way residents say them. A plumber or pest company should list West Ashley, James Island, Johns Island, Daniel Island and the peninsula as separate places, because a homeowner on Johns Island is shown a different set of nearby options than one in West Ashley.
• Listings that say "Charleston, SC". The capital of West Virginia shares the name, so citation building and cleanup puts the state, your 843 or 854 number and one spelling of your business name on every directory.
• Capability pages for suppliers. A machine shop, staffing firm or engineering consultant selling into aerospace, automotive, life sciences or the port is found by what it can do and which certifications it holds. Each capability becomes a keyword page.
• A review request after every job, stay or visit, sent to every customer, which keeps you inside Google's review policies.
• Links pointing at those pages: articles we place on other websites through outreach, Web 2.0 pages on publishing platforms, and second-tier links that make both count for more. Each one shows up in the monthly report with its live address.

How people in and around Charleston pick a business

The Census Bureau's American Community Survey gives a picture of who lives and works in the city. About 14% of working residents are in health care and social assistance, and about 13% are in professional, scientific and technical services: architects, engineers, accountants, lawyers, consultants and software firms.

Those two groups get searched for in different ways. A clinic, dentist or physical therapist lives in the map results. Someone typing "dentist West Ashley" sees a handful of names close to where they stand, and reviews, the primary category and accurate hours settle most of those calls.

A professional firm is found another way. Its client may be across town or three states away, and the search names the problem: "structural engineer Charleston SC", "estate planning attorney Daniel Island". One clear page per service, written for a reader who checks every line, does more for that buyer than a map pin.

Then there are the companies that buy from companies. The region is home to Boeing's 787 assembly site, the Port of Charleston, Joint Base Charleston and the Medical University of South Carolina, along with the suppliers that serve them. Their buyers search in small numbers and judge a vendor by the specifics on its pages.

The peninsula, the islands and the three towns next door

Charleston covers more ground than visitors expect. The city takes in the peninsula, West Ashley, James Island, Johns Island and Daniel Island, and it reaches from Charleston County into Berkeley County. I-26 heads north toward North Charleston, I-526 loops around the city, and US 17 crosses the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge over the Cooper River.

For a service business, that map is the first decision. List the parts of town your crews really reach. Give one its own page only when you can say something true about the work there, and let the profile cover the rest.

Three neighbors have pages of their own, because a business in each faces a different market:

• Mount Pleasant, over the bridge: consultants, home offices and households that compare a few names on a phone before calling anyone.
• North Charleston, up I-26: the working city around Boeing, the port and the base, full of trades and suppliers who sell to other companies.
• Summerville, farther up I-26 in Dorchester County: commuter neighborhoods where practices and trades go up against names from across the metro.

The rest of the coast, down to Beaufort County, is on our areas page.

Your first 90 days on a Tri-County plan in Charleston

Say you run a pest control company with crews in West Ashley, on James Island and on Johns Island, plus a second website for a termite inspection brand. Tri-County ($325 a month) covers 40 keywords across 2 domains and adds a competitor analysis, which suits a company that wants citywide terms on two sites.

Month one: the profile and the listings

We set the primary category to the service that earns the most, add the parts of town you reach, upload photos of your own trucks and crews, and write a description that names Charleston, SC. Then the citations: one business name, one number and one address or service area across the directories, with duplicates and stale entries removed. A short review request starts going out after every treatment.

Month two: service pages and the first links

Termites, mosquitoes and rodents each get a page. James Island and Johns Island get pages of their own only if you can describe the work there: the jobs you do most, the questions those homeowners ask, how often your crews are out that way. Link building starts as well, with guest articles on outside sites and Web 2.0 pages aimed at the new service pages.

Month three: the first report and the next round

The report lists every new link with the page it targets and its anchor text, along with the pages published and the reviews received. The competitor analysis shapes the next round of pages for the second site.

Profile and listing fixes are usually the first change you notice. Rankings for broad Charleston terms take months to move, and how many months depends on who else wants them.